


buckle up, buttercup

by xiiaeo



Series: svtlou [1]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Cars, Established Relationship, Guns, Humiliation, Light Praise Kink, M/M, Racing, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies, banterous sex, degrading, however, in all honesty it's rather tender, mild gun play, mild spanking, the violence you would expect from a zombie au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:07:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26718745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xiiaeo/pseuds/xiiaeo
Summary: It was carnal, glory, a celebration of the lives they still got to live even after looking death straight in its five thousand faces, and Soonyoung revelled in the shockwaves, would be quite content to drown if it was with Seokmin’s lips at his neck.
Relationships: Kwon Soonyoung | Hoshi/Lee Seokmin | DK
Series: svtlou [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2041378
Comments: 9
Kudos: 56
Collections: Seoksoon Fireball Fest 2020





	buckle up, buttercup

**Author's Note:**

> this is a combination of summer heat, bonkers by dizzee rascal, and the last of us two, so, enjoy?
> 
> as a sidenote: bonkers is the song they listen to in the car
> 
> edit post reveals: tis i! xiiaeo! back at it again with the tender feral seoksoon! and i can now link the song as usual :]
> 
> Bonkers - Dizzee Rascal ☆ [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/track/6ddQ5KCkvCggk3j6KdA0zL?si=pyrVYKuWRqaxjZRJww4ZIg) ☆ [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISy0Hl0SBfg&ab_channel=mushroomvideos) (an absolute classic banger)

Wonwoo’s last words echoed around Soonyoung’s mind, as they often did, and though he didn’t want those words to be the final thing he ever heard from his friend, that was always a very high possibility. At first, Soonyoung had struggled to come to terms with that and found himself carefully pitching his farewells whenever they went separate ways, even if it was just to scout out different rooms on the same floor. What difference did it make if Soonyoung’s last words to them were well wishes and heartfelt encouragement versus a playful jab and happy profanity? Absolutely none. Why did it matter if they walked to their death with valor or with laughter? It didn’t, so it didn’t take Soonyoung too long to stop gathering everyone for a whispered rally when they had ground to make up and not enough daylight to see it through. 

Now though, he was beginning to wish his goodbye to Wonwoo hadn’t been to tell him to go fuck himself despite it all being in good fun, no feelings hurt, because if he didn’t return then those would be the words Wonwoo was left with, go fuck yourself, however the words that Soonyoung was left with were no better, really, although they were spoken with an exasperated fondness.

_“You’re fucking insane, the pair of you.”_

Insanity wasn’t in short supply these days, so maybe there was quite a bit of truth to Wonwoo’s words, especially considering how the others agreed with him, and how no one else would offer to do these runs, and how this wasn’t even a job on the roster before Soonyoung conceived of it, with Seokmin, of course, but maybe not. Alcohol had played a part in their formulation of this tactic, what little of it they had, but tipsy minds had turned delusion into coherent thought, slurred rhyme to reason, and Soonyoung swayed with the dip of the bouncy old car, scraping his feet back down to the floor before Seokmin could complain about them being on the dash, as though a little crusted mud wouldn’t look perfectly at home with scratches and stains. 

“You ready?” Seokmin asked through a toothy smile, body turned to Soonyoung and completely at ease, looking ready to go for a leisurely summer drive and not to plough through a horde, though hopefully it wouldn’t come to that. His skin had a slight shine, a sheen of sweat along toned arms, pulled taught around collarbones and the sharp edges of his face, yet he still managed to look entirely auspicious no matter how much dirt was streaked across his features or how much blood soiled his clothes.

Soonyoung hummed an affirmation as he reached through the sun, across time, and landed a gentle hand against Seokmin’s cheek, wiping at it with his thumb, unveiling a little mole that was hiding amongst flecks of brown, and Seokmin leaned into the touch, cocking his head against the light, “You’re filthy.”

Thin dimples became more pronounced, adorning Seokmin’s smile as markers of mirth, sparkle in his eyes telling tales of nights long gone, but not forgotten, “You don’t usually mind that.”

“Shut up,” Soonyoung retracted his hand only for it to be swiftly caught by one of Seokmin’s and pulled in so that lips pressed against the backs of his knuckles, chaste in a way that Seokmin knew made his stomach flip, “You know what I mean.”

Seokmin hummed and relinquished his hold, leaving Soonyoung to miss the warmth even as slatted sunlight heated them up in the vehicle, no breeze to slip through the gaps and cool them down, “Maybe if we do this right, we can have a bath when we get back.”

Soonyoung raised an amused brow, and what he then proposed was not a foreign concept to the pair of them, “Together?” 

“Saves water,” Seokmin shrugged, may as well have winked, and leaned to swipe the walkie-talkie from where Soonyoung had shunted it to the dash behind the wheel, “Radio check. Alpha this is Wranglers. Over.”

**“Wranglers, this is Alpha. Read you loud and clear. Over.”**

A click of the button relayed Seokmin’s voice again to the group atop the hill as Soonyoung zoned out in that general direction, no hope of catching sight of any of their friends, of uttering anymore words to Wonwoo face to face before they were to meet the horde, “We’re in position and ready to go. Over.”

**“No sight yet, hang tight. Over.”**

“Wilco,” Seokmin set the device back down where it was, in the light that shone through the windshield, the only window on this poor car that hadn’t been smashed and replaced with strips of metal with barbed wire wound around them, and then he peered around to the backseats, “Are our leathers back here?”

“In the footholds, just reach around and you’ll find them, but you aren’t putting them on now, surely?” Soonyoung found his own plonked into his lap, immediately shoving them down to his feet, past the rifle, “It’s too hot.”

“Rather be hot than missing an arm, or dead,” Seokmin remarked, twisting back around to face ahead and begin cloaking his arms in a leather jacket, which was rather heinous of him, in all honesty, hiding those winding veins that Soonyoung quite liked to trail kisses along, not to mention the bump of his biceps that lead to the curve of his deltoids, though a bandana was already working to obscure the muscle from view anyway.

“They could be hours out,” Soonyoung reasoned, shaking himself from his thoughts, pulling the revolver out from the holster that wrapped around Seokmin’s thigh in brown straps, and Seokmin didn’t even flinch at the intrusion, because it wasn’t one, it was comfortable familiarity.

Instead, he lay his head onto the steering wheel, sun tickling through auburn strands, watching as Soonyoung repeatedly popped the cylinder out to spin the bullets around in a circle littered with clicks, “It’s been almost a day since they were spotted by the patrol and they were a day’s ride away, so they’ll be here soon and we have to be ready.”

“And we will be,” Soonyoung let his hands work absentmindedly, locking his gaze with Seokmin’s half lidded one. He looked tired without a beaming smile, lips stretched into a placid grin, cheeks maybe a tad too hollow, and Soonyoung decided there and then that he would have a word with Jeonghan about arranging a break for the pair of them, one that was long overdue and very well deserved, “This really all you got?”

Seokmin reached for his revolver when Soonyoung offered it to him, slotting it back into the holster with practiced ease and a lazy smile, eyes twinkling, “I’m not the gunslinger here.”

Soonyoung clicked his tongue in amusement, ego stroked, and suddenly felt the weight of the inventory hanging off his frame, pistol in a holster at his chest, another at his thigh, shotgun leaning onto him from where it was stashed, barrel down, in the pocket of the car door, and the assault rifle at his feet. Normally he wouldn’t be _quite_ so armed to the nines, mounds of bullets in the rucksack between his shins, but that wasn’t what Seokmin was referring to anyway. It was the proficiency in each of these weapons that Soonyoung possessed, the way he knew how they worked, how to fix them if they didn’t, and how to make every shot count.

Guns blazing was rarely ever the best course of action and, actually, it was far better for no rounds to be fired at all if that was possible, but oftentimes it wasn’t. Running out of ammunition was a common occurrence, running for their lives even more so, and if it hadn’t been for Soonyoung showing a very impressive display of sharpshooting while the rest of them banged on the gates of the town in desperation then those hinges never would’ve creaked open to welcome them into solace as a mound of otherwise dead weights, injured and barely worth the time and medical attention.

“Alright,” Soonyoung rolled his eyes as though the title bothered him, a chip on his shoulder that he needed to brush off, and yet in reality it made him warm in a way the sun couldn’t, for Seokmin to praise his skill set, “We can’t all be Legolas.”

Seokmin snickered at that, sitting himself back up, cheek turned against the headrest, “I’m sexier than Legolas, don’t you think?”

“Oof, that’s a tough one,” Soonyoung mumbled pensively, playfully, and earned himself a shove in return as they dissolved into laughter and then comfortable silence, giving his mind ample time to wander while they waited for word from Alpha.

Seokmin had never quite taken a liking to firearms despite everything they had been through while trekking across the country. Empathy played a huge part at first, as he had told Soonyoung one night, he was unable to shoot what was once a living human for fear that they were still in there somewhere, under all that decomposing flesh and the animalistic urge to devour, to spread, to multiply, but even after that notion was put to rest he still took no interest in owning an arsenal, as virtually everyone else seemed to do.

However, he was no fool. He understood the need to have at least one on his person at all times, hence the revolver today, his favourite, _their_ favourite, but he much preferred to use a bow and arrow and Soonyoung would _never_ complain about that, lest it was because he almost met an untimely end due to starting at Seokmin’s shoulders strung in a broad line, arrow drawn. Archery, in Soonyoung’s opinion, was a much harder but more reliable skill to hone; there would always be sticks, feathers, and scrap metal to make arrows, but there would always be wind to blow them off target and gravity to pull them to the ground before they could meet their mark.

Seokmin managed though, more than managed. He prevailed over most of the other archers back in town and was often sent out with a patrol to be dropped at a lookout and silently pick walkers off from a distance, which was why securing him as the driver here and now was such a hassle in the first place. No one else was willing to do it, no one believed that it would work, that they wouldn’t get immediately overrun and be lost to the horde, and no one wanted to lose Seokmin for something that sounded so outright bonkers on paper, least of all Soonyoung, but they had done this before, the pair of them, they were the only two who had.

It had started off as something more covert, a very risky and irresponsible way of drawing out all the zombies in one area so that they could meet the chopping block swiftly, and it had worked. It had also used all the gas that they had managed to siphon from other cars, so it was not a tactic that had been swiftly approved of by the rest of their squad, but in light of how effective it was, a pact had been made thereafter.

Any gas that Soonyoung and Seokmin got to first was theirs for the keeping, theirs to pour into a poor old car to use it as a temporary battering ram while drifting doughnuts around a bunch of frenzied corpses, and any found by anyone else would be going back to town. 

That was more than fine with them as they had not planned on making it a routine endeavour, driving, revving the engine, purposefully making themselves the noisiest thing for miles, and at most, it was to be for a bit of fun, a way for them to be bait while the others practiced their aim from afar, attacking the swarm around the car, but the maximum number of zombies they had attracted erred around twenty or so, until recently. 

It was an accident, a complete fluke, in that they had been fixing a car up in the closest city when they were accosted by some other survivors, kids, young adults at most, and held at gunpoint for their supplies before their ambushers were ambushed and they found themselves surrounded by snarling rotten flesh. Then it became the living against the dead, regardless of any other agenda, and Seokmin scrambled into the car followed by Soonyoung, and the two kids. 

It was a race against the gas meter, the arrow teetering to taunt them, to show them how swift their pathetic amount of fuel was running out, and Soonyoung could barely hear himself shouting into the walkie-talkie over the bullets that the kids were firing back at the runners who got too close for comfort, and couldn’t hear anything but static crackling for the longest time until Chan’s voice came through and informed them that the snipers were in position, and that they should drive along, show their side to the hill, so that’s what they did. 

It was a lot of bullets, a lot of arrows, and more adrenaline than Soonyoung thought his body was capable of producing, but after picking off the last few himself, stood on the roof of the car after it had rolled to a dead stop, ears ringing, only then did he see the trail of carnage that they had left behind, stretching for miles across fields of cracked soil. They took the kids in after that, they became part of the community and apologised, sincerity that told Soonyoung that they hadn’t threatened to kill him for the hell of it, but for genuine survival purposes, and that was enough for him to wave it away and leave them to get acquainted with the place while he went to go process what had happened.

They were becoming too lax as a community, too comfortable with the ease of the lives that they had built here, and they had overlooked a small horde. They hadn’t been patrolling wide enough, diligently enough, and if not for Soonyoung and Seokmin creating enough racket to take the horde and announce it’s arrival in the nick of time then the horde would’ve rolled through the forests blanketing the hill and descended into the valley, and Soonyoung didn't really want to test out how sturdy the walls around the town were, surprisingly enough.

Wranglers were what they became known as, when the tale spread and when their earlier escapades of the same nature were passed around as menial gossip, and Soonyoung didn’t mind the mantle, loved it, really. It was nice to not be afraid of creating noise and to instead utilise that to their own advantage, to tell the stories of his drives with Seokmin and their squad to the children of the town and instill in them a hope of one day reclaiming the rest of the world outside their fortified walls, and he loved the rush of freedom that it brought him, how it made killing these monsters feel more like a game and a lot less scary if they just had fun with it.

It wasn’t long before there was a fizzle of static, as Seokmin had predicted, and Soonyoung was sent into autopilot, sliding himself into a leather jacket, strapping his hands into fingerless leather gloves as he checked that each one of his guns was loaded for the nth time since they had parked here, off to the side of the city’s edge. 

**“Wrangles, this is Alpha. Horde sighted but it is much larger than expected. If you want to back out of this there’s still time to fall back to the wall. Over.”**

Soonyoung furrowed his brows at that. Backing out was never part of the plan, it wasn’t even discussed when everyone was being allocated to their positions in the treeline atop the hill, swayed to place their bets on this plan by Jeonghan’s clever lips. Seokmin was to drive, Soonyoung was to shoot any that got too close, and together they would serve to divert the horde away from their current path which would take them right through town and over the hundreds of inhabitants. The soldiers were to snipe, the archers were to try, and anyone who dared to get to eye level with the horde was more than welcome to descend the hill and protect their home with silenced weapons. They had even laid explosives that were, as Mingyu had repeatedly assured them, strictly remotely detonated and would _not_ explode if Seokmin drove over where they were buried, so that was lovely, and yet despite all of that, Seungcheol was still suggesting that they abandon the operation.

“Why?” Seokmin asked, all the formalities of radio communication dropped in his momentary lapse of understanding, “How much larger?”

Soonyoung reached for the binoculars that he had abandoned to the cupholder, raising them and dialing the focus in to the last few buildings that the horde would have to meld around in order to spill out into this open field of straggling grass and otherwise nothing, and yet he could sight none. There were people perched in the top floors of those buildings, however, Eagles bouncing communications back across a different frequency, so Soonyoung would not question the knowledge being relayed to them but that didn’t mean his heart was settled by the urgency in Seungcheol’s clipped tone when it came.

**“Five times. ETA two minutes. Come back.”**

“We can’t come back,” Seokmin reasoned, turning wild eyes to meet Soonyoung’s pensive stare, and it wasn’t really clear who he was talking to at this point but he held down the button on the walkie-talkie anyway, “We’re too close to drive back. They’ll hear the engine anyway and come running.”

**“You want to drive through a horde of five thousand zombies?”**

There was some shuffling from the other end, a clear change of hands in a scuffle, and then it was Wonwoo’s voice that came down the line when he should be staring down a scope, ready to provide cover fire.

**“We can have the Eagles create a diversion in the city to buy you more time but you have to make a decision** **_now.”_ **

Words weren’t needed for Soonyoung to know that Seokmin’s thoughts were the same as his, that noise in the city would put those in the city at risk just for them to have a tiny sliver of extra time, and it was not worth it. A second of gazing into each other’s eyes stretched into an eternity of what-ifs, but those were always there for this scenario, they had known the risks before driving out here, when they thought the horde was smaller - still a lot larger than the fluke one last year, but smaller than it had now turned out to be - and this didn’t change anything for them, really.

Sneaking around and scavenging just to get by was alright, that was how they had lived for the longest time, but until every last one of those monsters has a bullet through its skull then they will just keep infecting, keep the cycle going, so someone has to be loud, dare to live, draw them all out and gun them all down, or hope will become a bygone pipe dream, and exactly that had become their mandate, Soonyoung and Seokmin, racing to their death or to their future, only fickle time would tell.

“Do you have the munitions?” Seokmin asked after a beat of tense silence, receiving more of the same in response as discussions were had amongst the trees, and then they got their answer from Seungcheol, not Wonwoo.

**“Yes.”**

“Count us down,” Seokmin said, tone final, and handed the walkie-talkie to Soonyoung so that he could instead wrap his hands around the steering wheel, fingers curling in slow succession as he blew out a long breath, turning to peer into Soonyoung’s soul again, “Are you sure?”

“You know I love this,” Soonyoung cracked a half smile, the other half kept a fine line by the harsh beating of his heart. A thousand was a lot, more than enough to send any sane person running, but a thousand was doable, killable, avoidable with swerving tires in their armoured car, but five thousand? Soonyoung had never even seen five thousand of them at once, never mind acted as bait for the bunch so that they could be blindsided by the cavalry on the hill, yet there was an odd anticipation swirling in his gut, finger itching to pull the trigger.

Even if this was where they met their end, even if they only took out a few hundred before the car flipped over and they were eaten alive, that still gave everyone back in town more of a chance to survive what remained of the horde when it would inevitable plough on by, and even if it didn’t, even if their walls were immediately scrambled over, well, then at least they tried.

**“ETA one minute.”**

“Hey,” Seokmin’s hands left the wheel and he twisted his torso over the gearstick, aiming to land a kiss on Soonyoung’s lips that met his cheek instead, whining through a pout thereafter as the glare of the sun reflected off the bonnet to blind Soonyoung where he sat, “Let me kiss you.”

“No,” Soonyoung whined back, matching the tone, and giggled when kisses were peppered ticklishly along the column of his throat instead as he informed Seokmin that he knew _exactly_ why he was not allowed to do so when he asked. 

Kissing Seokmin was something Soonyoung loved, something he could and did do for hours on end when time would simply slip by elsewise, but kissing at moments like these, right before they were about to face any sort of danger, whether it was crawling through unknown territory for the tiniest chance of food or tossing themselves in the path of a horde, felt like a kiss goodbye, and Soonyoung was not at all ready to say goodbye, nor did he think he ever would be.

Seokmin had been told this, had understood completely, but that didn’t mean he stopped his playful conquest each time they were on the verge of certain death, and it had become a running joke between them, all thirteen of them, that if Soonyoung would accept a kiss from Seokmin then they were not in any imminent danger and could proceed with light hearts but constant caution. Soonyoung appreciated it as much as he acted like he didn’t, even now while he shoved Seokmin away, because it did help to take the edge off whatever was about to happen, to just mess around with the love of his life as though they weren’t toying with death as their lips wandered.

“It’s not a goodbye kiss,” Seokmin declared so earnestly, holding Soonyoung’s hands in his own to stop himself from being pushed back to his own side of the car, and his tentative expression made Soonyoung smile, “It’s a, uh, a promise.”

Soonyoung raised a brow, gaze flicking between Seokmin’s eyes and down to his lips, “A promise?”

“That we’ll make it back home.”

“Well,” Soonyoung began, finding that his hands were already moving to naturally cradle the Seokmin’s face as gentle fingers settled against his neck, “When you put it that way…”

Seokmin’s breath ghosted across his lips, a giddy energy surrounding him that was endearing and admirable, considering their circumstances, “Can I kiss you?”

“Not goodbye,” Soonyoung murmured, letting his eyes slip shut, ignoring the stifling heat as summer cooked them in the car and Seokmin’s proximity set his insides on fire.

“Not goodbye,” Seokmin agreed ardently, and then time stopped for them as they kissed soft and slow, a chaste peck that turned into something much deeper and familiar, drawing out a hum from low in Soonyoung’s throat, and as timeless as it felt, Soonyoung wanted it to last impossibly longer when they pulled apart as Seungcheol’s voice wrapped in static reached through their lovesick haze, sternly exasperated.

**“ETA thirty seconds. Less tongues down throats and more pedal to the metal, please.”**

They simply laughed at that, foreheads resting together for a few peaceful seconds, and then Seokmin returned to the driver’s side entirely, turning the keys to produce a rumble from the engine. He smiled at Soonyoung, expression reassuring, kind, loving, and oh so fond that it sucked away the last bit of apprehension that Soonyoung had been silently harbouring, “You better buckle up, buttercup.”

Golden strands filled Soonyoung’s eyes when he rolled them at the pet name, fastening himself in. Dyeing his hair used to be a rather frequent endeavour before the outbreak, black roots barely ever poking through, but it swiftly became the least of his worries and then he was blessed with healthy locks when all the dead colour grew out, so of course after finding a tub of bleach a month ago his immediate course of action was to fry his hair all over again. It was still rather fluffy, actually, despite them lacking the proper tools and professional experience, and the night that he had spent sat on the floor between Seokmin’s legs while Seokmin diligently coated every strand was one that he would always look back on with a smile.

It was the day _after_ that he was crowned buttercup, sprawled in spring grass after he and Seokmin had run for their lives and vaulted over a fence, the little yellow flowers tickling their cheeks. 

The sound of the engine revving still drilled a deep pit of dread into his stomach after so many years of painstakingly avoiding being loud, but it only lasted a second before it was filled with a swirling concoction of anticipation and apprehension. Seokmin drove them down the small incline, the last metre or so before they were on a level playing field with the horde, and slowly inched them closer to the centre of what was an eerie skyline when viewed from the hilltop, buildings dilapidated and dark. 

“Fuck,” Soonyoung breathed out, barely audible even to himself. The first few lines of the horde were spilling into the field, stumbling forward as a listless hivemind, but it was not hard to imagine them as a screaming crowd of thousands, bloodthirsty and clinging to any part of the car that they could grab. 

This was the most terrifying part of the entire ordeal, the sitting and the waiting, the luring. If they could get past this part then they were set for a home run, if they could time it just right then there would be nothing to worry about, and if the car, for whatever reason, decided not to accelerate, then they were as good as dead. Seokmin brought their speed down to an even slower crawl along patchy grass while they were still relatively far from the horde, but that was about to change imminently, “You ready?”

Soonyoung undid the small latch on his window, the one that allowed him to remove most of the plating that covered it elsewise so that he could fire from the gap instead, and then raised his shotgun as a silent answer. The first few beats of music played quietly, almost ominously if not for the choice of song and the way it made Soonyoung snicker in disbelief, but he did not get a chance to comment before Seokmin professed, “I love you.”

“Don’t say that,” Soonyoung snapped his gaze away from the horde, a singsong lilt to his voice to mask the unease that those words set into his core, only in times like these, “You’re acting like we’re not going to make it out of this.”

“Can a man not declare his love on the battlefield?” Seokmin enquired, full of the woes of life, and then the facade was lost to him as he whined instead, fingers on the volume dial of the stereo system, “Can you at least say it back?”

“I love you too, you know I do,” Soonyoung indulged in haste, not for lack of love but for lack of wanting this moment to linger as though it would come to mean something more in the grand scheme of his life, “Now get a move on before we get friendly fire sniped so that our deaths are swifter than being mauled by the horde.”

“Such a romantic,” Seokmin sighed wistfully and Soonyoung reached over to punch his shoulder before they were both surrounded by hefty bass music from a decade ago, the only CD that they could listen to in this car because it was stuck in the disc tray and they had not the care to remove the whole unit.

It did the trick, regardless. They became the noisiest thing about in an instant, the biggest target for miles, and Soonyoung watched as hundreds of vacant faces turned their way, the ones leading the horde on their unwarranted migration path. If he had been faced with something like this at the start of the outbreak, terrified and unequipped, he would have ran and ran until he collapsed or he would’ve simply passed out and succumbed to his fate, but he wasn’t the same person as he was back then, far from it, and aside from the lingering fear that Seokmin’s timing could be off, this could be fun, in all honesty. 

There were some that got too close, the stragglers that were already in the immediate vicinity of the car before they even started to blast the music, and they were the ones that Soonyoung’s shotgun was reserved for. He could barely hear the rounds he fired over the booming of the speakers, but he could feel the blunt force of the recoil, see corpses flying limb from limb, and it was a wonder that this was all part of his normal life now, completely desensitised to gore and startled by kindness. Snipers picked off more for him, clean shots through the head that didn’t cause anywhere near as much carnage as bolts of shrapnel, and he tried his best to not look through the windscreen, but it was hard not to peek; there could be some getting too close to Seokmin, after all.

“Drive,” Soonyoung found himself uttering, voice lost to the pounding of the bass, sweat beading along his neck as he stared into innumerable sets of white eyes and slacked jaws. They were very close, closer than Seokmin had let them get last time, and if they didn’t kick up to a higher speed _now_ then this really would be the end of the line for them, “Drive!”

Seokmin didn’t hear him. Seokmin still didn’t drive even when Soonyoung shoved him to get his attention and watched him lipread the words. All Seokmin did was raise a calm hand before wrapping it back around the steering wheel and Soonyoung was a second away from shoving his own foot down by Seokmin’s to slam the accelerator himself when the car finally lurched away from the approaching horde, swerving to miss the closest bunch though not without one of them taking the wing mirror at Soonyoung’s side along with it.

Soonyoung didn’t have time to be mad at Seokmin for almost feeding them directly to the horde, nor did he really want to be. This was the good part. He switched to his pistol to fire back at the runners who were trying to keep up with their four-wheeled speed, and once they were blatantly in the clear, a glaring target for a crowd of thousands to follow, he found himself laughing as he fired shots out the window, heart racing and adrenaline thrumming through his veins, and started to think that maybe he was a little insane as Wonwoo had said, just a tad.

There was nothing quite like this feeling, flying along at god knows what speed and hailing good riddance to the monsters that had plagued the world for years, it was something akin to a heroic glory and a sick sense of satisfaction. There was always method in their madness, they really did think that clearing out every single last one of them was the only way that humanity would ever have a real chance at survival, but they also thrived off the release of laying waste to an entire legion of the undead, or, well, at least Soonyoung did. 

As people, before they became infected, Soonyoung had no vendetta against any one of these five thousand, as far as he knew, but now they were just lumps of rotten flesh barely hanging to bones and it was kill or be killed and the choice was rather clear. Everyone had lost someone to them, none of them were innocent, and none of them could be saved, they were not human anymore, and the best thing to be done for the people that they once were would be to let them rest in peace, not to wander as living corpses. 

The volume of the music lowered, no doubt by Seokmin’s hand, and then Soonyoung could hear the shots he was firing and the screaming of the horde, the echoing of the shells that were fired from the treetops, and it was now his time to be Seokmin’s eyes, to relay to him what was going on behind them as the back windshield was boarded up with metal slats, and to tell him to speed up if any grabby hands got anywhere _near_ the rear end of the car. Protecting Seokmin was Soonyoung’s primary job, helping to clear out the horde was secondary, and if he failed at either of those then they would be lost to history together.

Soonyoung dipped back into the car to fetch some more magazines for his pistol, ignoring the slight shake to his hands as he whipped his eyes around to Seokmin who was driving in a manner that would’ve once been considered reckless and now would be praised as skillful, “How far till the explosives?”

“Not far!” Seokmin yelled back but did not take his eyes off his current path, lest it was to let them flicker to the parts of the horde that peeled out of the city and headed straight for the passenger side of the car, “You might want to take care of that!”

They were driving so fast that they could ditch the horde entirely if they wanted to, flying along in a mostly straight line, and Soonyoung was more concerned about missing a shot than he was that he could lose his life here. Aiming from a moving vehicle was something that hadn’t come quite as naturally to him as he would’ve liked, targets zipping on by before he could get a good lock on them, but that was okay, that was better than being overwhelmed, better than having too many heads and not enough bullets. The ones that Seokmin had pointed out were charging at them, coming from the side and slightly in front, and Soonyoung worked an easy sleight of hand to switch to his assault rifle and pepper them as best as he could, flinching when one lunged for the car as it sped past only for it to be shot from afar, skull pierced clean through.

A tap on his side pulled him back into the car once again, and he could still barely hear Seokmin over the racket following them even with the music now a low rumble, “Can I make a turn or not?”

Are there too many of them is what Seokmin was asking, and Soonyoung really couldn’t tell from here, or from hanging out of the window, couldn’t get a good view of all of them at once, so he asked down the walkie-talkie instead, firing occasional shots at stragglers who had been on the edge of the horde and were now in front of them, “Are we in the clear for a U-turn?”

**“No, at least not yet. You're almost clear of the explosives and then we will gauge what remains.”**

“Count us down,” Soonyoung let the device fall into his lap, still in hand, and found himself letting out a long breath, the gargling screams of thousands ringing in his ears, and yet even in dire straits Seokmin’s warm tone washed away any fear. 

“What did he say?”

Soonyoung almost mumbled his response before remembering that he would have to yell for Seokmin to hear it over the roar of the engine, and the horde, “Explosives first, then we’ll see.”

“Are you okay?” Seokmin asked, and when Soonyoung turned to look at him, perplexed, he was not expecting their gazes to lock together. It made sense, Soonyoung supposed, since there was nothing in front of Seokmin for miles, that he could take his eyes off the road, but that didn’t mean he was prepared to be under such gentle scrutiny, so profoundly _known._

He parted his lips to respond and no sound came out, gaze flicking to a shine on the hill that he could barely see through the corner of the windscreen, one of the snipers, but none of the snipers were positioned that far out; he had a personal hand in orchestrating the entire operation, no one was further out that the pylon. There was a sudden twist in his gut, an instinctual lurch that made him lean to grab the wheel and swerve the car to the side just in time for Seokmin to shriek as a bullet shot through the windscreen.

Right between their two seats.

There was some chatter from Seungcheol that Soonyoung couldn’t hope to decipher and another bullet hit the hood of the car, it seemed, and Seokmin spiralled into a frenzy, “What are you doing?”

“We’re being shot at, we need to turn the fucking car around!”

“The horde!” Seokmin reasoned, though he was turning the car nonetheless, taking a very wide berth that would see them driving closer to the treeline at the bottom of the hill.

“There’s a sniper shooting at us!” Soonyoung unbuckled himself to begin crawling into the back of the car, over the gearstick and cup holder, walkie-talkie in hand, “Seungcheol there’s—”

**“What the fuck are you doing?”**

“There’s a sniper shooting at us from by the upper pylon so we’re turning around,” Soonyoung craned to reach the latch that kept the panel on the back windscreen, unlocking it and simply letting the panel fly back into the horde that was gaining on them in their wide semicircle of a path, “Blow the charges.”

Seungcheol didn’t need to be told twice, it would seem, as Soonyoung heard the explosions not a second later, a pocket of gorish screams silenced yet many more prevailing. He couldn’t see most of the carnage, boxed in by the slats covering the backdoor windows, but he was about to cause a lot more himself, anyway, “I can cover us from the horde but I can’t do anything about the sniper.”

**“I’ll send someone.”**

If Seungcheol said anything else after that then Soonyoung didn’t hear it, walkie-talkie dropped and forgotten in favour of getting his hands around the bulky gatling gun that had replaced the middle seat, barrel pointing backwards. Nothing had changed aside from the hammering of his heart, his primary job was still to protect Seokmin, and now he got to play with a big gun while doing so. It was incredibly loud, his shots were sloppy from Seokmin’s strategic swerving to avoid being on the wrong end of a scope, and he had to stay low, duck down to avoid being sniped, but he was laying waste to any snarling fuckers who got too close for comfort, and to those who wandered into the slapdash line of fire. 

Broken hands scraping along the side of the car alerted his attention and he pulled the pistol out of its snug pouch across his chest, undid the latch, and shot the panel off, knocking one of them to the dirt with it. There were too many at the side, too many that had flaked off from following and were now just making a beeline for the car rather than treading the path of the tire tracks, and there was not enough ammo in this pistol, or in the one at his thigh. A shot from close behind made his ears ring and he turned to see Seokmin’s revolver returning to its holster, blood splattered up the leather wrapped around his forearm and a corpse slinking away from the passenger seat and out of the window.

Protect Seokmin; he nearly failed.

Yanking the gatling gun off of its steady rig was not an easy feat, one that Soonyoung knew he only accomplished due to added adrenaline and the burning desire to live, and holding it to fire out the side while still keeping low with the brutal recoil was not ideal nor comfortable, but he did it. He didn’t have a choice in the matter. Kill or be killed. A sharp swerve almost threw him into the footholds, back bowed over the cup holder while the gun pinned him in place, rendering him a useless piece of cargo, but he managed to sprawl across the seats instead, only mildly winded by the heavy artillery. 

Seokmin shouted something that he only partially heard over the roar of the horde, something about the tyres, and it didn’t take a genius to put two and two together from the way the car was still swerving, hoping for traction. The sniper had shot one of their tyres, popping it, and a spike of panic pierced through Soonyoung, forcing him to swiftly right himself as Seokmin fought with the wheel and gearstick. He returned to his prior position, gatling gun firing out the side of the car, aiming for their heads while keeping his own down low, and the blinking of the walkie-talkie where it rattled around under the front seat drew his attention.

Bracing the recoil against his shoulder hurt, balancing the barrel through the window was precarious, and straining to reach the damn device was near impossible, but it slid into his hand on the next veer of the car, “Come again?”

**“Sniper made a run for it. You’re in the clear.”**

It was Seungcheol, voice only audible when Soonyoung pressed the speaker right against his ear, and he could hear the shots being fired from over the wire, warranted fire. He almost wanted to laugh at Seungcheol’s words, maybe he did a little, a snort as he stared straight ahead into a field of dead eyes and flailing limbs, but he understood what Seungcheol meant, that they only had this one visible threat to worry about now, “Copy that. Lost a tyre.”

**“Looks like you’re managing.”**

“We always do,” Soonyoung found himself saying, mentally praising Seokmin’s prowess behind a wheel, and he was definitely smiling around his words. 

He could forget the walkie-talkie again, surrender it back to the floor, because focusing fire was imperative now every slight turn harboured the risk of them spinning out and being swarmed within a matter of seconds. For how long he stayed like that, churning through spiralled rounds of bullets as the car swerved and the screech of the tyres became louder than the screams of the horde, he had no idea, he just knew that at some point, when the crowd had thinned, he abandoned the bulky thing and took to dual wielding, hanging out of the car now that they had ploughed through the brunt of it, laughing, maybe a little hysterical. 

Gatling gun out of ammo, pistols lacking in chamber size, and shotgun not having the range, Soonyoung frantically reached for his assault rifle and remained in the back of the car, able to shoot out of both sides when they got a little too wiley. Aiming with this felt familiar, hands deft when switching the magazine, recoil negligible, and he could be much more accurate now that the sniper wasn’t a worry, could actually look at the horde dead on without fear of earning a bullet through the skull himself.

There didn’t seem to be an end to them, with every body that fell to the floor another seemed to take its place every time, but when Seokmin managed to have them leading the whole pack again, no stragglers in front or to the sides, Soonyoung could see that there were significantly less, maybe less than a thousand, all with sights trained on them from with the car, from in the treeline, and from atop the hill, laser scopes marking their target with red dots that Soonyoung sometimes caught flashes of in between the angrily swinging limbs.

It was not until they were well out of harm's way, miles from the centre of the calamity, the crater that the explosives must’ve created, that Soonyoung was then able to care about how grossly sweaty he was, slumped against the back seat as Seokmin gradually decreased their speed. Seungcheol’s voice came again, barely audible to Soonyoung over the rushing of his pulse in his ears, but he listened, breathing heavily to calm his nerves, eyes closed for just a moment of peace.

**“Wranglers, you’re clear to regroup. Ground crew are finishing off the stragglers. Over.”**

It was curt formality, it lacked celebration, and it told Soonyoung there was a chance their conversations were being listened to be a third, unwanted party. He shifted the hefty gatling gun out of the way and reached towards the sound, scraped the walkie-talkie from the foothold, still a little breathless when he responded with a simple, “Copy that.”

There was more to be said, more to ask, troopers to be accounted for and any losses to be tallied, but not now, not over a network that wasn’t secure for certain, and not when he had something more pressing to attend to. The car came to a slow stop at the base of the hill, a little up the incline so that they were sheltered by the trees, as Soonyoung clambered back over the gearstick and into the passenger seat, or at least he tried to. He found himself being guided instead to the driver’s side to land on Seokmin’s lap, an idea that must’ve been stellar in Seokmin’s mind and was actually a mess of too many limbs and not enough space in reality but they just laughed as Soonyoung tried to maneuver himself and Seokmin slid his seat back to create more room.

Steering wheel pressed against his back, slouched to avoid hitting his head on the roof, and hips slotted on top of Seokmin’s, it was too hot, far too hot, to be sat like this, each wearing leather jackets of all things, and swaying leaves offered little shade over the vehicle, but Soonyoung wasn’t thinking about that. He stared down into Seokmin’s eyes, screams echoing in his mind, and thought about how that really was almost a goodbye, their last run together, forever, very conscious of the shattered glass of the windscreen behind himself.

There was a small splatter of blood up Seokmin’s cheek, the one that followed on from the leather at his forearm, the only indication that he had fired a shot, and Soonyoung reached to cradle his cheek and wipe it away, would much rather have it stain his own hands than Seokmin’s pretty face.

“Are you okay?” Seokmin asked, the same words he had uttered before Soonyoung spotted that glint in the distance, the same soothing cadence, and this time there was no lurch at Soonyoung’s core and no shots fired, nothing but the sound of their breath mingling and the trees whispering in the meek breeze.

“Yeah,” Soonyoung responded after what felt like a lifetime, his own voice sounding far away and Seokmin’s hands heavy where they rested on his thighs, “Are you?”

Seokmin hummed in affirmation, the sound travelling through Soonyong’s palm where it had slipped to cradle the side of his neck, and he smiled, “Thanks to you.”

Soonyoung couldn’t help but smile back, pushing away the small part of himself that wanted to protest, to debate that he had let slip his surroundings and almost allowed Seokmin to get bitten by that one that launched itself through the open passenger window, to instead inquire, “You know of anyone who wants you dead enough to snipe you while you’re already being chased by a horde?”

There was a huff of laughter around Seokmin’s words, a sound that was so natural it was hard to believe that years ago it would’ve been horribly misplaced in discussion of something this serious, their lives being on the line and all, “Can’t say I do, no. You?”

“Anyone who wants you dead would also want me dead, so no, I can’t either,” Soonyoung’s amusement leaked from his tone and escaped as a sigh, and he felt a familiar shake start to set in, holding a hand out between them to watch his fingers jitter, to clench and unclench his fist until Seokmin took gentle hold of his digits and slid the fingerless gloves off one at a time to deposit them onto the passenger seat before he kissed the backs of Soonyoung’s knuckles, again. It wasn’t the scorching heat of the summer sun, nor the leather sticking to the sweaty skin of his arms, nor the way their bodies were pressed together, but it was that simple kiss that finally made Soonyoung feel like he was suffocating, unable to grasp reprieve from fresh air, “As much as I love sitting here, can we get out of the car before I melt?”

Seokmin raised his hands in defence, a playful smile at his features as he cocked his head to the door, “Be my guest.”

Graceful was at the end of the list of words to describe Soonyoung’s dismount, he practically fell out of the car, stumbling over his own feet across dusty dirt and parched grass, and he was swift to peel the jacket off and toss it back at Seokmin who caught it with a mildly scandalised complaint before storing it, and his own, inside the car. It was not all that much cooler out here really, Soonyoung discovered, but it was nice to stretch his legs and reach his arms overhead, roll his shoulders back and work out all the kinks with a grumble. 

He wandered aimlessly just for the sake of movement, coming to stare at the hood of the car, at the shattered glass of the windscreen, and realised that there were quite a few shots fired before they had managed to spin around completely. The metal was far too hot to come to a seated lean on, finger retracted immediately after giving it a prod near one of the bullet holes, and a gasp from Seokmin made him jump out of his daze, drawing the pistol from his thigh holster in an instant to swing it around, “What?”

“You’re bleeding,” Seokmin said, tone flat with worry as relief flooded Soonyoung’s system when he followed Seokmin’s line of sight to see crimson painting his left bicep. 

“It’s just a scratch,” Soonyoung decreed after poking at it, pulling on the skin and not feeling much pain, if any, yet to crash but fingers still shaky. Maybe it was a bullet that had nipped along his flesh, maybe it was from the chaos of crawling around in the back of the car and maneuvering the gatling gun, or maybe it was something else, the seatbelt catching his arm, an empty shell flying away from the barrel, but that didn’t really matter in the end so long as it wasn’t a bite.

Seokmin’s lips were pursed when Soonyoung looked back up at him, clearly not all too happy with the flippant response, and he reached into the car to collect the bag that had been stashed securely under his seat, kicking the door closed before he began to walk off into the forest, “Come on, I think there’s an old cabin near here if we are where I think we are.”

“What about the car?”

“Just leave it,” Seokmin called over his shoulder and gestured again for Soonyoung to follow, which he did, only after collecting his shotgun, assault rifle and his own bag of ammo lest some scavenger would decide this was their lucky day.

The cabin was very close, Seokmin was right, and their walk was short and silent. Idle chatter was reserved for times of safety, security, when they had a perimeter and the means to patrol it, not when they were walking through a forest that was essentially a no man’s land. If not for fear of attracting nearby walkers it was for fear of attracting nearby _humans,_ and as much as Soonyoung would prefer to deal with the former rather than the latter, he would be most pleased by crossing paths with neither, if possible.

They let themselves in, the door not locked, and barricaded it behind themselves, as was custom, and surrounded by the four thick walls of the little log cabin, Soonyoung felt much safer, if not a bit boxed in. One room to man was more than doable for the pair of them and one window, no glass, would be easy to cover with some dusty bedsheet, but Seokmin had other plans, it would seem, pulling a stool out of its topple to set it back on his feet, “Come sit and I’ll sort you out.”

“It’s only a scratch,” Soonyoung complained halfheartedly, rolling his eyes with a fondness that only Seokmin could elicit as he complied despite his words. The two firearms that were not strapped to his body were soon set onto a table void of anything else, this place raided of all and any life that had once resided here, and he could only hope that maybe these people had moved into their town for the comfort of safety in numbers. Hands snaking around his waist from behind pulled him from his thoughts and reached for the buckles of the leather straps across his chest, breath fanning across his neck, “What are you doing?”

“I don’t think you need this on in here,” Seokmin uttered softly, pressing a kiss to Soonyoung’s nape that made his fingers momentarily stop drumming across the tabletop with nervous energy, “We’re far from all the action.”

“Someone could come in,” Soonyoung stated, met only with a slight chuckle.

“It’s not like I’m throwing it out the window,” Seokmin perched his chin on Soonyoung’s shoulder, buckles undone, and pulled the holster off, pistol still strapped into it, to set that onto the table also, “It’ll just be here, with the others.”

Soonyoung didn’t say anything to that, just stared down at his weaponry until the tapping of his fingers annoyed him, until Seokmin’s fingers blanketed his own and pressed his palms flat against the wood and another kiss to his nape before all those sensations were gone at once, “Come on, let’s bandage your scratch.”

“You really don’t have to,” Soonyoung urged in such a tone that one would think he hadn’t immediately plonked himself onto the stool, ready to be tended to, “It’s barely bleeding anymore.”

“It could get infected,” Seokmin said, and that was the end of the debate at once. He dropped to one knee on the creaky floorboards and wobbled with laughter when Soonyoung cracked a joke about him proposing and about this being a _terrible_ way to do it, and before he knew it, the wound was lovingly cleaned, the bandage was on, tied in a tight knot around his muscle. Seokmin tugged at the bandana around his own bicep until it came loose and then wrapped it around Soonyoung’s instead, a little decoration to keep the bandage in place, and he gave it a proud pat, smiling, “There, all done.”

“Thank you,” Soonyoung murmured, stomaching his qualms about that being a waste of a gauze to just appreciate the care, and he ran a hand through Seokmin’s hair in a ruffle. He earned a fuss at that, Seokmin complaining that his hair was sweaty and not to be touched, as though Soonyoung would be repulsed by such a thing, and Soonyoung, of course, could not care less and informed Seokmin as much before they dissolved into a comfortable silence that lasted all but a few seconds.

And then it hit him.

There were five thousand, there was a whole horde, and now there were none, or, well, maybe there were a few still crawling around in the aftermath and maybe there were a few late to the party who would be wandering into the carnage right about now to be picked off by the ground crew, but as far as their objective goes, there were none. They had done what they planned to do, they had put their lives on the line and walked away with the only damage being the tiny scratch nestled into Soonyoung’s bicep and the bullets through the windshield, smashed, and now they got to live to die another day, “We did it.”

“There it is,” Seokmin smiled, knowing, used to it taking this long for the reality of their situation to slam into Soonyoung at full force, “We did.”

“Seokmin we took down an entire horde.”

“I know, I was there,” Seokmin shrugged and pushed himself up to avoid the playful slap that Soonyoung tried to land on him, huffing laughter as he walked a few paces to the other side of the room to perch on the edge of the bed that was really just an old, stained mattress with some pity pillows, “We had help.”

“We _were_ the help,” Soonyoung stood to follow, to take a seat next to Seokmin so that their bodies were angled facing each other, “If we hadn’t done that then the horde would’ve kept walking and reached town, and after that, who knows? They could’ve ploughed through another town.”

“But they can’t now,” Seokmin surmised, leaning into the touch of Soonyoung’s hand against his cheek, cocking his head against the golden light pouring in through the window, “They’re gone.”

Soonyoung nodded, echoing, “They’re gone.”

There was a shake in his core, a deep rattling of his bones that had him feeling buzzed with residual energy and presented itself in the tremor at his hands when Seokmin took both of them to lace their fingers together, though he was not without aftereffects himself. It was in the eyes for Seokmin, they were wide, barely blinking, forever sparkling on high alert, and there was an occasional twitch at the outer corners, one that Soonyoung always noticed but never pointed out. 

Soonyoung’s heart started to demand his attention again, not racing to thrust his blood around his body in mania, but beating loud, hard, mingling with Seokmin’s that he felt through their interlinked fingers, and it was only ever a matter of time, really, before they closed the distance between themselves and put their haywire nerves to good use. They could say they were okay with it, with the wrangling, with being outlandish and very literally throwing themselves into the fray, and they were, always, until the fallout.

It was carnal, glory, a celebration of the lives they still got to live even after looking death straight in its five thousand faces, and Soonyoung revelled in the shockwaves, would be quite content to drown if it was with Seokmin’s lips at his neck.

A cloud of dust flew up when Soonyoung pushed Seokmin’s back down to meet the mattress, straddling his hips, and they both coughed through laughter, too amused to care about the state of their lungs, too used to worse conditions to complain. Seokmin’s hands were hot when they skirted up Soonyoung’s spine to rid him of his vest, travelling down his vertebrae in streaks of fire over skin already coated in a sheen of sweat, but Soonyoung preened nonetheless, arching down so that they were chest to chest.

This close, Soonyoung could see how sloppy his earlier clean up job was, how Seokmin still had little flecks of dried blood staining his cheek from him drawing his revolver earlier, and he reached to wipe it away, to scratch at it with a gentle nail, “I’m sorry. I was supposed to protect you.”

Seokmin smiled, that same placid smile that always greets Soonyoung in the mornings despite the ridiculous times they have to wake up at, and he craned his neck to press a chaste kiss to Soonyoung’s lips, pleased with himself, voice as soft and sweet as always, “I’m here, aren’t I?”

Soonyoung couldn’t fathom a response to that, not one that would have sounded in any way reasonable, not one that could carry any real weight, so he deepened his apology by sealing their lips and expressed his gratitude by swirling their tongues, delighted when Seokmin hummed and hands made a home in the pit of his lower back. Alone time was not sparse for them, it was not a luxury to be able to explore each other in the dead of night or the light of dawn, but it was not often that they got to be loud in their love.

On expeditions, it was for fear of attracting more zombies to their position, or humans, and back in town, after lights out, their community was enveloped in serene silence only interrupted by the occasional cawing of a bird. Summer demanded that they keep their windows open to create a draft to cool themselves in the night, and so they had grown rather adept at muffling their love, too conscious of the fatigued trying to acquire midnight solace to be unabashed about it. 

Out here though, so far out, so in the thick of the woods and away from any other sound, suddenly silence felt too bleak, infuriating rather than peaceful, and Soonyoung kissed his way along Seokmin’s jaw and down the column of his throat, nipping with his teeth to elicit the sweetest little gasps, but that still wasn’t enough. He slid further down, pushed Seokmin’s vest up over his pecs, and then kissed his way down again, lingering in the slight indents in the flesh, muscles earned through fighting to survive for years on end, enjoying the weight of Seokmin’s hand threaded through his hair, dormant but ready. 

Soonyoung rolled himself back up to a seat after reaching a soft happy trail, hands still shaking when he attempted to undo the fastening at Seokmin’s navel, shaking so much, in fact, that he couldn’t undo the singular button to get to the zip, “Fuck.”

“Let me,” Seokmin said kindly, pushing himself up so that they were now sitting chest to chest, Soonyoung straddling Seokmin’s lap, Seokmin’s revolver digging into Soonyoung’s thigh, and Seokmin’s legs off the edge of the bed. This is exactly how they were sat in the car, only now there was a lot more room to fool around while the same sun beat down on Soonyoung’s nape, and yet Soonyoung felt the heat at his cheeks when Seokmin gave him a sleazy grin, “There’s no need to rush.”

“We don’t know how things are back there,” Soonyoung posed, hands coming to rest on Seokmin’s shoulders so that they couldn’t shake while Seokmin made swift work of his own trousers, “And we don’t know about the sniper.”

“And?” Seokmin raised a brow, zip down, and lay his hands at Soonyoung’s hips, the two in a very loose sort of embrace, “You brought the walkie-talkie, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Soonyoung patted himself down, finding it in the pocket at his thigh and brandishing it at once.

Seokmin took it gently and lowered it down to the floor, letting it fall most of the way, “If they need us, they’ll let us know.”

Soonyoung was easily convinced, qualms soon forgotten when Seokmin kissed him again, chests flush together, and then his only concern was that Seokmin shouldn’t still have his vest on by this point so it was at the other side of the room in the next moment, clinging onto the table of firearms. A breathy moan of pleasure tinted with pain fell from Soonyoung’s lips when Seokmin gave a tug to his blonde strands, making him bare his throat so that it could be kissed and sucked, adorned with splotches of red love, before the grip was gone and their lips met again to stretch seconds into hours.

Golden was the first word that came to mind when Soonyoung peered up at Seokmin after shuffling to kneel on dusty floorboards. He was beautifully golden, painted in the summer rays of light, squinting now that Soonyoung was no longer up there with him to cast a darkness over him, and the only shadows present now were around his eyes from where auburn strands hung, and along his cheeks from the curvature of his features.

“You look like you have a halo,” Seokmin spoke into Soonyoung’s stunned silence, snapping him out of his listless daze with such a doting tone it almost made Soonyoung roll his eyes as he helped Seokmin shimmy out of his trousers _just_ enough.

“Must you be so sappy right before I suck your cock?”

“Isn’t that the perfect time to be sappy?” Seokmin enquired in the rhetoric, brushing Soonyoung’s bangs up and out of his face in a gentle motion that did not allude to his devilish grin, “Or I can tell you what a good boy you are, if you like?”

Soonyoung didn’t comment on the way those words warmed his core, not wanting Seokmin to know how easily affected he was, as though Seokmin hadn’t known him innately for so long that the pair of them had lost count of days past along with the world, “I will bite your dick.”

“Dare you,” Seokmin challenged through a slight huff of laughter, fully aware that Soonyoung would do no such thing, that this would be a case of all bark and no bite, and he was entirely right. 

It took a short while for Soonyoug to work Seokmin to full hardness with his hands and lips, to stave off his pulsing adrenaline and convince his body to accept pleasure and not to brace for pain, but Seokmin’s moans were worth the effort of braving the sun and sucking until his cheeks were hollow. They were a sinful melody to Soonyoung carried through the humidity to reach his ears as crystal clear noises of pleasure, lewd, somehow dainty, too raw to be sealed into a porno, and the only way Soonyoung could conceive of them sounding better would be if Seokmin’s lips were right against the shell of his ear. 

Soonyoung sat back on his haunches only when he was guided to by a gentle tug at his hair, panting through spit slicked lips as he peered up at Seokmin with a sly smile, “Were you close?”

Seokmin was definitely close, Soonyoung had been watching his abdomen tense and could now see the gentle heave of his chest, but he loved to ask, just to tease, “You know I was.”

“So?” Soonyoung lay his head to the side, leaning it against Seokmin’s inner thigh, feeling the leather straps of the holster cool against his cheek, “Why’d you stop me?”

“Wouldn’t you rather fuck?” Seokmin asked with such nonchalance, combing calming fingers across Soonyoung’s scalp in a gentle, repetitive scratch, that it made Soonyoung’s head spin. 

He always asked, he always had, even before the outbreak, and whether it sounded like a joke or was pointedly stated into the moment he always meant it as a genuine question, maybe even more so now. They weren’t always in the mood, definitely weren’t always prepared, and almost always were too tired, adorned in aches and pains, fearing for their lives with every step, but here, in this very moment, Soonyoung was rather sure of himself and his desires.

Seokmin knew them too, Soonyoung’s desires, but he would still ask.

The motion of fingers across his scalp stopped when Seokmin slightly tugged the strands to recapture Soonyoung’s attention, draw glossed over eyes back into focus with a raised brow that reminded Soonyoung that he needed to answer, humming, “I would. I doubt you brought lube, though?”

Seokmin clicked his tongue with a cheeky smile, “You think so little of me.”

“You’re unbelievable,” Soonyoung countered, rising to his feet with Seokmin’s help, and then he traipsed across the room to rummage around in Seokmin’s rucksack.

“Prepared,” Seokmin argued, and when Soonyoung turned to see why he could hear Seokmin padding across the room too, shirtless with his pants still up and erection standing proud through the fly, he found Seokmin to be hanging a ragged blanket over the sole window and quirked an amused brow, “What? I have a little decency.”

“Yeah, after I’ve sucked your cock for the whole world to see.”

“The world isn’t watching,” Seokmin announced as he toed his shoes off and sat back on the edge of the bed in the now muted light as Soonyoung tailed him, coming to a stop between his legs, standing this time. He was no longer painted like summer’s favourite, dipped in hues of the golden sun, but his skin was still bronze, a lingering kiss, and his eyes held all the light that Soonyoung needed when he stared up and gently spoke, “Your hands have stopped shaking.”

Soonyoung hadn’t realised, had been too lost in everything Seokmin to notice, and he held his hands out to stare at them, to catch them out, but he never got the chance to. Seokmin took his hands, took the little bottle of lube and discarded it on the bed, and then kissed his palms, his fingertips, the backs of his knuckles, and then gently let go. He pulled Soonyoung closer by the hips and kissed at his navel in a way that Soonyoung found to be ticklish, at his abdomen in a way that made his stomach swirl, and it was only a matter of time and buttons before Seokmin’s lips wandered along the side of his shaft, too. Then it was Soonyoung’s turn to whine, to guide, to let his moans fall out over where his hands were threaded through auburn strands and to be completely unrestrained about it. 

“I’ve missed hearing you like this,” Seokmin murmured, hands working instead, eyes half lidded when Soonyoung dropped his gaze down to look and to stagger from the weight of Seokmin’s stare, of his slack-jawed state.

Soonyoung’s response came only after a breathy moan and a shaky inhale, entirely unable to get any real sway behind the words but not all too bothered about it, “You should’ve heard yourself.”

Nothing was said for a while after that, only laboured breathing and the lewd sound of Soonyoung’s cock sliding in and out of Seokmin’s mouth filled the small, once empty cabin, but Soonyoung couldn’t hold out for as long as Seokmin had, far too worked up already just from being on his knees earlier. He stepped back, pulled his boots off, shimmied the remainder of his garments off, and was then left bare in front of Seokmin, nothing but the bandage around his bicep to obscure the view, as though that really hid anything.

Seokmin stood up then to close the distance between them once again, Soonyoung’s face between his hands as Soonyoung’s arms looped around his neck, “You’re beautiful.”

“I know,” Soonyoung dismissed the compliment in an attempt to dissuade further flattery, convinced that his cheeks were already as flushed as they could get, and they both shared in soft laughter, “Not as beautiful as you.”

Seokmin simply hummed, not one to argue with his words when he could win with his actions, and Soonyoung melted into the kiss that was pressed against his lips, jolting with a gasp into Seokmin’s mouth when he felt a hand wrap around his cock; Seokmin smiled into their liplock. 

The room twirled around Soonyoung before he was met with the bleak sight of the ceiling panels, wood darkened from being hammered with the elements, calloused hands laying him gently as though he was being placed onto silk sheets and not a scratchy, stained mattress, but they had long since become accustomed to grime. Seokmin’s face filled his vision swiftly after, a much nicer sight, soft and sharp, and then they were kissing again, forgetful of the steadily setting sun, craving contact even in this heat, and Soonyoung was glad when Seokmin instructed him to flip over, unsure of how much longer it would be before he crashed from the day’s events entirely, wanting nothing more than a long rest. 

Elbows to the bed and face buried in his forearms, knees in the sheets and ass in the air, Soonyoung moaned lowly as Seokmin worked him open and for once enjoyed the cool feeling of the lube despite the way it still made him twitch upon first touch. Seokmin was forever tentative, commanding the flow of time with the weight of his free holding around Soonyoung’s hip to keep him from squirming, impervious to complaint, but he was not a sadist, and not without his needs. Soonyoung preened when Seokmin finally entered him, albeit painstakingly slowly, and reached a hand out to grasp at nothing only for one of Seokmin’s to come up and blanket it, lacing their fingers together to press them into the mattress as he kissed along Soonyoung’s nape.

“Fuck,” Soonyoung breathed out when he found himself fully seated, ass flush against Seokmin’s pelvis and the tops of his thighs, unable to think, “Do you still have your pants on?”

“Yeah,” Seokmin continued to pepper kisses along Soonyoung’s shoulders until he broke away to have his lips hover at the shell of Soonyoung’s ear, breath tickling, “I’ve still got my revolver too.”

_“God,”_ Soonyoung almost moaned, and then did when Seokmin shifted slightly, “Are you trying to kill me?”

Seokmin huffed a laugh, both amused and greatly entertained, it would seem, and his breath fanned across Soonyoung’s nape as a hot cloud, “I just thought it’s been a while since we messed around, and my buttercup deserves to blow off some steam.”

“So do you,” Soonyoung concurred, memories of cool steel flashing through his mind at what Seokmin was harking back to.

“Don’t worry,” Seokmin soothed, voice sinfully low, and Soonyoung could hear the curl to the ends of his lips when he spoke, “I get just as much of a kick out of it as you do.”

Soonyoung felt lightheaded at that, as though it was new knowledge, not a fact he had been delighted to learn innumerable moons ago in a bout of frivolous roleplay, but he did not manage to formulate a response as Seokmin finally started to move in a practiced ebb and flow that sapped all sense of rationality from him and replaced it with pleasured ardence. Being loud with each other, for each other, was only natural to them, quashed by their empathy for their fellow community members, but not now, not here.

They were beyond the need for encouragement that came as tender quips or harsh scrutiny, entirely able to get each other off with the right movements, the right rhythm, but that didn’t mean they relinquished their dirty words entirely, usually murmuring them into each other’s ears in the dead of night. However, now, listening to Seokmin’s low, unrestrained moans, hearing his own be bounced out of him as they picked up the pace, Soonyoung didn’t think himself capable of stringing any words together at all, or at least nothing more than a breathy call to Seokmin through his lustrous haze. 

Seokmin, on the other hand, had a lot to say about their current situation. Endless praise made Soonyoung feel his whole body flush as he buried his face into his forearms, unable to tolerate Seokmin telling him how good he felt, how hot his moans were, how sexy he looked with his legs spread nice and wide, and when Soonyoung didn’t respond with more than incomprehensible moans he earned himself a slap to the ass, quawking a meek thanks at the flattery. Feeling a rush of shame during sex was not foregin to him, a humilation that he welcomed, another source of heat to fuel the fire at his core, and he whined at the back of his throat when Seokmin pulled out entirely, wiggling his hips around to no avail, rebuked for being needy, instructed to roll over. 

Seokmin was back between his legs in a flash, descending like a starved man to acquire another searing kiss, and Soonyoung looped his arms around Seokmin’s neck, moan swallowed when Seokmin started to fuck him again, the metal of the revolver digging into his thigh with every thrust as Seokmin held his knees apart. He let his head tip back, let Seokmin mouth at his throat as staccato whines of pleasure fell from his lips, and didn't know what to do with his hands at all, wanting to grip onto Seokmin's shoulders for purchase and dig his nails into the flesh and yet lacking the strength to do so, torn between feeling airy and weighed down, scrambled by Seokmin switching from slow and hard to short and fast regardless of the desperate rock of Soonyoung's own pelvis. Seokmin's lips were at his ear, moans backed by whispers pouring out, and Soonyoung learned that he should've been careful with what he wished for considering how the sounds made his dick twitch where it lay neglected against his abdomen. 

"Please," Soonyoung begged, but what for he wasn't entirely sure. He didn't want this to end, was rather content to stay in this muted golden hour with Seokmin balls deep inside of him, rocking pleasure into every fibre of his being, but also desire to be touched, to be wrung dry and allowed to experience his high alongside Seokmin and for the pair of them to come down together in a lazy tangle of limbs. 

Maybe Seokmin knew what Soonyoung wanted more than he did himself, maybe he could see the adrenaline wearing off, the need for a respite settling in between the constant push and pull of his release, because it wouldn't surprise Soonyoung if Seokmin knew him better than he knew himself at this stage, could read into the twist of his features and glean flecks of knowledge, and maybe he felt the same, too. He hummed, kind eyes finding their way to Soonyoung's as a hand came up to brush Soonyoung's bangs back, "Do you want to cum?"

"Please," Soonyoung echoed himself, nodding, only realising there were tears in his eyes when he blinked and they hung from his eyelashes, splotching his vision slightly.

Seokmin's expression turned from compassion to mischief within a few seconds, morphing beautifully for Soonyoung to see as he was slowly inched up and down the mattress, "Do you want me to get my revolver out?"

Soonyoung didn't need to give a verbal response for Seokmin to know the answer to that, but he did anyway because Seokmin liked to hear it, "Yes, please, it's been a while."

"It has," Seokmin concurred, pressing a swift kiss to Soonyoung's lips before he sat back up on his haunches, still between Soonyoung's legs, still inside him, and brandished the weapon. Soonyoung watched with dark intrigue as Seokmin made a show of simply holding it, inspecting it almost, just so that he could capture Soonyoung's attention and spur him on further as though he wasn't already rock hard directly below where the barrel was currently suspended. 

Seokmin popped the cylinder out and Soonyoung spoke, mouth dry, "Keep it loaded."

"Absolutely not."

"I trust you," Soonyoung urged, only making a crack in Seokmin's stern expression when he added, "With my life."

"I know you do, babe, and I trust you with mine, but I am not going to let you die because my finger slipped while we were fucking," Seokmin explained, reasonably so, and Soonyoung pouted, prompting an idea, it seemed, "Close your eyes."

"Why?" Soonyoung asked, but closed them anyway, and he understood why straight away when he heard the clicking of the cylinder as Seokmin spun it and the crisp slide of metal on metal as bullets were unloaded and seemingly reloaded - it was hard to tell, but he did not peek. 

"Now you don't know whether it's loaded or not," Seokmin announced after spinning the cylinder to a close, and Soonyoung opened his eyes to be met with the sight of Seokmin hovering over him again as he felt a cool prod on the underside of his jaw that was unmistakably the muzzle of the revolver, and he swallowed, hard.

"Is the safety off?"

There was a click, "Now it is."

"Fuck," Soonyoung uttered, tilting his chin up when Seokmin made him do so, pushing the muzzle deeper into his flesh, and his breath came out shaky, eyes trained on Seokmin's, locked in lust and fatigue forgotten. 

Seokmin hadn't understood what Soonyoung liked about this the first time he suggested they try it, years ago and with a water pistol as the deadly weapon because that was all they could find amongst Seokmin’s musical props. Needless to say, that was far too funny for Soonyoung to feel anything but laughter bubble up from within when Seokmin tried to play the scene for him, so they had put it on the back burner until they could find something more fitting. An apocalypse wasn't what Soonyoung was expecting to be the cause of the broadening of his sexual horizons, but guns became exceedingly common to the extent of it being odd to not have one, or three, and they had gone for round two. 

Seokmin still didn't understand, maybe he understood even less the second time around now that they had both, had all, been witness to the real destruction that firearms could cause, to the walking dead or to warring factions of living, so Soonyoung had explained. It was all about trust, he had no desire to _actually_ meet his end at the wrong end of a barrel after blowing his load, although there were certainly worse ways to go out, but it was the knowing that he was utterly powerless to prevent it, completely at Seokmin's mercy, no choice but to do as told, and that's what was so thrilling about it. He knew Seokmin would not actually shoot him clean through the skull, _trusted_ that he wouldn't, but he _could._

Seokmin had only understood when they physically tried it, when he trailed the muzzle down Soonyoung's cheek in a tender line of exploration, as he did right now, and watched Soonyoung shudder, inevitably seeing the colour rise to his cheeks. Having the power, being the one in control, was something that got Seokmin's head spinning, a fact Soonyoung already knew from their other escapades and the reason that he had brought this fantasy of his up with Seokmin in the first place, so he was elated to learn that this was a kink of Seokmin's too, just waiting to be discovered. 

This gun in particular, Seokmin's revolver, had seen more of Soonyoung than most people, more than the sun or the stars, and a tiny part of Soonyoung liked to believe that Seokmin didn't like to draw it for that reason, didn't want to dirty it to preserve its place of intimacy in their exploits, but he had no ground to declare that on, really, just lovesick delusion. 

None of that mattered in this moment as Seokmin picked up the pace, movements more stuttered and a little less coordinated, tired but determined, and Soonyoung wrapped his arms around Seokmin's neck, holding him close. A cold line was drawn down his side, interrupting his otherwise shameless barrage of moans to have him gasp and jerk away from the sensation, sick part of his mind wanting him to arch into the steel, to dare death to come to him even though it would not, even if the gun was still loaded.

Was it?

It could be. Seokmin could shoot him right now, but he wouldn't, won't, can't. Seokmin loves him too much to shoot him, Soonyoung was well aware of that, but it still went against all natural sense of comfort to be on the firing end of a weapon, insides stirred in a strange way when it pressed under his jaw again and trailed down his neck. All it took for Soonyoung to finally go over the edge, to condense what felt like hours of being entangled with Seokmin into one soaring sensation, was for Seokmin to murmur filthy sweet nothings into his ear, demean his performance, confuse him with contrasting pet names, and give his poor leaking cock a quick jerk, and that was it. He came with a cry of Seokmin's name, for once not having Seokmin's hand clamped over his mouth for fear of potential zombies or complaining neighbours and he oddly missed the warm weight, the familiar restraint. 

Seokmin was quick to follow, sitting back up to pull out and spill all over Soonyoung's already coated abdomen, pumping them both dry as their bodies convulsed with release and were flooded with warmth. Soonyoung lay there listless, chest heaving, suddenly aware of the sweat coating him from head to toe, bangs plastered to his forehead, and felt rather gross. 

"God," Seokmin heaved, chest rising and falling with his panting when Soonyoung managed to roll his eyes out of his skull and land them on his love, "That was hot." 

"Yeah," Soonyoung agreed, well spent, limbs heavy, and reached halfheartedly for Seokmin to come closer and he wordlessly did, presented with a quick kiss, "I am hot, like, physically."

Seokmin chuckled at that, pecking Soonyoung's lips again before the warmth that he was radiating disappeared as he receded off the bed and over to the rucksack, no doubt to fetch a rag, "Me too. Doubt you still want a hot bath when we get back?"

Soonyoung turned his head to watch Seokmin but made no effort to move, aside from letting his bent legs fall to the side, knees knocking together, "I can't decide whether a cold shower or a hot bath would be better."

"Why not both?" Seokmin enquired, and as they got into a discussion about the ethics of water usage considering the inadequate water system in their town built from scratch, Soonyoung's stomach was wiped clean with utmost care before they helped each other back into their clothes and fought to be the one to tie the other’s shoe laces. 

Seokmin won, so he himself declared, though Soonyoung didn’t quite feel like a loser sat on the edge of the bed, legs dangling over with Seokmin on his knees to dotingly tie sturdy little knots. After Seokmin slipped his own boots back on with ease, laces never once udone, Soonyoung pulled him down to the sheets, backs against the mattress but twisted to curl into each other, warm and tired and ankles locked together, and they both just breathed for a moment, seeking reprieve now that their lovesick giggles had subsided. 

Soonyoung pressed a kiss to Seokmin’s cheek before watching him haul himself up and head toward the window, sky still golden when he pulled the sheet away from it but definitely dimmer than it had been when they first set foot into the cabin. It was high time they made their way back to town, Soonyoung decided after joining Seokmin at the window, clouds sailing to hide the sun, but dusk didn't instill fear quite like true night did. Heavens swiftly forgotten in favour of gazing at Seokmin’s form, Soonyoung took in how thoroughly fucked he looked in the afterglow now that daylight shon on him, eyes slightly hooded in a happy haze, hair an endearing mess and scratches present at his shoulders, not hidden by his vest, and thigh holster still empty. 

Soonyoung scooped his own up off the floor and set about redoing the two buckles, gesturing with his head to where Seokmin's revolver remained on the pity excuse of a bed, "Your gun."

"I wasn't going to forget it, don't worry."

After that singsong lilt, nothing but the sound of Seokmin's boots on the wooden floorboards filled the room, that and the steady racing of Soonyoung’s pulse in his ears as Seokmin picked the revolver up. He was seconds away from slotting it into the holster when Soonyoung had to ask, just had a burning desire to know, "Was it loaded?"

"See for yourself," Seokmin suggested, easily offering the gun out to Soonyoung who took it curiously, not quite sure whether a lack of bullets in the cylinder would be relieving or disappointing, not sure what he wanted to find.

Soonyoung popped the cylinder out to stare at the six chambers, six possible homes for a bullet to nestle into, five of them were empty and one was not, "You're insane."

"Hypocrite," Seokmin smiled, merely mirroring the grin of disbelief that Soonyoung had on his own face, brought on by another sliver of adrenaline at realising he really could’ve died, Seokmin actually could have shot him, but he _didn’t._ He could have pulled the trigger at some point, an accident, the click of the cylinder and the knock of the hammer unheard over the sound of skin slapping against skin, and that could’ve been it, Soonyoung’s life ended there and then in one shot, bliss the last thing he felt.

Kissing death was the only thing that came as a close second to kissing Seokmin.

“Also,” Seokmin continued, stepping back into the light of the sun, where he belongs, to reclaim his revolver and utter in a tone so playful he may as well have winked, “I prefer the term bonkers, babe.”

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER!! gun play with a LOADED gun with the SAFETY OFF is NOT A GOOD IDEA DO NOT DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! russian roulette is also stupid!!!!!!!!!! i am not liable if you go getting ideas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this is fiction so we are allowed sexy gun fun!!!!!!!!!
> 
> that being said i hope you enjoyed!! a kudos would be nice and a comment mean the world :')
> 
> edit post reveals: gotta add my usual twt link of course <3
> 
> ☆ [hmu on twitter! @xiiaeo](https://twitter.com/xiiaeo) ☆


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